


Let me do it right for once

by DreamingOfABetterYou



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), M/M, Misunderstandings, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Sad Crowley (Good Omens), Set after the world didn't end but before the trial
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22409800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingOfABetterYou/pseuds/DreamingOfABetterYou
Summary: After Armaggedidn't and heading back to Crowley's place to plot, one more of Agnes' prophecies is revealed:666. He loves ye back, ye olde serpent fool.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	1. Should have known (the truth)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my darlings! This is a plot bunny that just didn't leave me alone, so I had to give you the first part already even if I'm not done with the second already. It'll come soon, I swear.
> 
> Title is a piece from Richard Siken's beautiful poem "Litany in which certain things are crossed out".
> 
> Hope you enjoy, I love you!!  
> Liz x

After the world didn’t end, after a quiet bus ride back into London, after Aziraphale and him had plotted according to what they thought their respective head offices had in store for them based on Agnes’ prophecy…After all of that, Aziraphale looked around Crowley’s living room like he’d just been transported there.

„Nice place.“

Crowley cackled. „You hate it.“

„It’s…different“ Aziraphale offered carefully. _We’re different_ , Crowley added bitterly in his mind. He clenched his fist around the piece of paper hidden in his jacket pocket.

“The book girl…She gave me something, too” he started slowly, and ignored the urge to smooth out the frown lines which now appeared on Aziraphale’s face with a gentle stroke of the thumb. “It’s another prophecy.”

“About tomorrow, about what might happen?” Aziraphale asked eagerly, even if his eyes betrayed his nerves.

“…Ngk. Not- not quite. It _is_ about us, though. And…” Crowley retrieved the crumpled note card and held it carefully, like one might hold a dead dove before breathing life back into it. (Hypothetically speaking, of course.)

“She had it with her when we were at the airbase, and before she left she just walked up to me and said ‘this is for you, I think’. It’s prophecy 666, would you believe that, bit on the nose really” he tried to chuckle, but his throat was tightening with each word, with each step towards the inevitable end of the conversation. He would have to own up to it, there was no way around it, and it terrified him.

Curiously, when he looked up, Aziraphale’s face was frozen in shock. For a split second, nothing made sense: Sure, their chances of survival were very, very slim in even the most optimistic light, but Aziraphale had already known that ten minutes ago, he would not have…Oh.

“You know what it says” Crowley said monotonously. “Of course you do. You had the book, and you read it. And you didn’t say a thing.”

“Crowley” Aziraphale pleaded, and his voice sounded so appallingly _guilty_ , “I’m so sorry, I would have told you.”

“Told me?” Crowley hissed. In the corridor, the plants started shaking violently; a cruel example of Pavlov’s conditioning. “What exactly would you have told me, _angel_?” The endearment-turned-curse dripped off his tongue like black, venomous tar. Aziraphale flinched at the wave of disgust coming off of the demon. Even worse than the disgust, and the anger underneath, though, was the heartbreak that was at the base of it, the heartbreak that settled heavily on Aziraphale’s tongue like something foul and rotten.

“I’m sorry” he whispered again, not wanting to look to the floor like a coward – even if that was what he was, really – but even less wanting to look at Crowley. Even with the dark glasses, he could feel Crowley’s eyes digging burning holes into his face.

“ _666\. He loves ye back, ye olde serpent fool_ ” Crowley read out from the paper in his hand before balling it into a tight fist.

“Funny how life goes, eh? For about three hours I really thought we’d make it, you know. Not just you and I” Aziraphale’s stomach twisted at the careless way Crowley spat out the words, “but the entire world. I really thought we’d done it. But apparently, Agnes is just as much of a charlatan as every other bloody prophet, and we’re still _fucked_!” The demon shook his fist towards the ceiling manically before suddenly, all strength seemed to leave him at once. Aziraphale was by his side in an instant, ready to catch him should he fall.

“Go away, Aziraphale” Crowley muttered listlessly, shoulders drooping and head hung. The paper dropped from his slack hand, a gentle rustle as it hit the ground in the otherwise perfectly still space.

“I can’t apologise enough” the angel insisted, even if he was careful not to touch Crowley in fear of making him angry again.

“’s not your fault” the demon slurred miserably. He scrubbed a careless hand over his face, dislodging his glasses and making them tumble to the floor; he made no move to pick them up again or to miracle new ones. “’s not your fault she was wrong. I should’ve known, really, that…Hngh.” He jerked his head, like trying to get rid of a particularly annoying insect or daydream, and shrugged.

“I’ll be going to bed. Go, or stay. I don’t really care, right now.” Without another look, Crowley skulked towards his – apparently – bedroom. There was no life left in him, and it ripped Aziraphale apart. Still, there was one thing…

“What do you mean: She was wrong?” he called after Crowley, feeling terribly courageous and terribly stupid.

“If she made one mistake, who’s to say she didn’t make another. They might as well come for us tonight, or in a minute, or they’ll do ssssomething else to us. Perhaps they’ll just throw us in the darkest holessss they can find and ssswallow the key, have you ever thought about that? No usssse having other facesss then.” Crowley got more and more agitated as he talked, his snake nature taking over, elongating his words into hisses.

Aziraphale swallowed, took a breath, and…nothing. He couldn’t say it.

“Crowley, I…”

“I know you’re sssorry. No need, really, it won’t matter when we’re dead” he proclaimed casually, but his eyes were wet with tears. _He’s terrified_ , Aziraphale’s brain needlessly informed him. _He knows what Hell is capable of, and he’s terrified of it happening to him_.

“Crowley, she wasn’t wrong!” Aziraphale blurted, and everything stopped moving for a moment. Even the plants forgot to shake as they worked over this new piece of information.

Crowley blinked at him, head tilted gently to one side. Different emotions washed over his face at a rapid rate, like he kept thinking about how to possibly sort what Aziraphale had just said and not finding the proper equipment to handle it.

“…She was, though” he replied, a bit nonsensically, after Aziraphale waited for him to react in some way. Any way, really.

“Everything in that book” the angel took another unnecessary breath, “every prophecy in there is real. She was never wrong, Crowley.”

Crowley’s face twisted into something complicated and painful-looking before he formed his next sentence. “But you don’t…” He broke off, left the sentence to tamper off into silence or go on a gap year in India or do whatever else it might like to do. His lips began to form words, but ultimately refused to voice anything more, like speaking his thoughts aloud would break him into pieces.

“I do, though” Aziraphale confessed. “I do love you.”

Crowley shook his head lightly. “No” he breathed, and suddenly it was easy, too easy. “No you don’t, Aziraphale, you don’t love me and you never will and that’s fine, honestly, I’ve had enough time to get used to the idea that…”

“Stop at once, my dear” Aziraphale contradicted, and the demon indeed fell silent.

Carefully, he stepped closer to Crowley; even if he didn’t dare touch him just yet (although every fibre of his being was yelling at him to just pull Crowley in his arms, pull him close, cradle him, comfort him, protect him), this wasn’t a conversation he was keen on having while they were five meters apart.

“Agnes was right. I do love you back, though I wouldn’t call you a fool” he chuckled lightly and looked into Crowley’s eyes again to see if the demon might join him in this gentle teasing.

Crowley was stone-faced. Even worse, his eyes were overflowing with tears, tears that streamed down his face silently. It would have been easier to see him openly and loudly sob and curse; to see Crowley so restrained in his anguish made Aziraphale want to rip himself apart, if only to be spared another second of seeing this.

“You would have let me die thinking that you didn’t want me. You would have let me die thinking I was alone. You would have let me die thinking that I _went too fast for you._ ” Crowley’s voice was quiet and controlled and sharp as a knife, even as the tears still ran down his cheeks. He made no effort to conceal them.

“Crowley, my dear, I swear that I didn’t mean…” Aziraphale started desperately, somehow glued to the spot despite his urge to wipe away the demon’s tears; even if he was at fault for causing them.

“Get out” Crowley said, voice finally cracking; his mouth twisted into a heart-breaking shape before flattening back into an unforgiving line. “Get out of my life.”


	2. The things you do for love

_“Get out” Crowley said, voice finally cracking; his mouth twisted into a heart-breaking shape before flattening back into an unforgiving line. “Get out of my life.”_

Aziraphale froze. “Do not make me leave, Crowley. Please, we can work something out.”

Crowley shook his head like a petulant child; he had his arms tightly wrapped around his thin torso, shield-like, and his eyes were firmly drawn to the floor.

“Crowley, be sensible. We just have to do the swap and get through tomorrow, somehow. And after we’re safe, we can go and talk! Anywhere, _anywhere_ you wanna go.” His brain was too slow to catch up with his words, and the moment he realised what he had said, it was already too late.

Crowley looked at him like Aziraphale had struck him across the face with all his might. Aziraphale didn’t dare open his mouth to apologise; he had done more than enough damage tonight trying to make something better, and a simple _I’m sorry_ wouldn’t be able to undo the pain caused by making Crowley remember that ghastly night in the Sixties. _You left him behind_ , the nasty voice in Aziraphale’s head jeered at him, like it had many times since that particular night. _You hurt him, and then you left him, and he will never forgive you for it. He shouldn’t._

“You’re just as bad as they are” Crowley said slowly, like he was voicing thoughts that had finally started clicking into place in his head. Aziraphale wanted to protest, to talk himself out of it, to curl up and escape Crowley’s painfully vacant face, but he knew that he deserved everything the demon had to say, and even more.

“Gabriel, Michael, the whole lot. You might actually be worse than them; you made me believe you were _different_. And you made me believe I could be…I could be capable of redemption, in some way. That I could do something other than…Ngk. You acted like you genuinely thought I was more, more than just a ridiculous demon who can’t even properly tempt people into being bad. I can’t believe I actually thought you were right. And now I’m in this mess, with nowhere to go, nowhere to escape…”

“Use me” Aziraphale blurted out, interrupting Crowley’s diatribe against himself. “Use me to be free.”

“What the hell are you talking about now?”

“If someone from Downstairs would come to get you tomorrow, and you would have a– a dead angel to prove your loyalty to them, to the cause…" Aziraphale pressed his lips together. "I’m not saying you’d be back in their good books right away, but they wouldn’t destroy you, at least. You’d have more time.”

The click of Crowley’s throat as he swallowed drily was unusually loud in the silent flat. “Are you suggesting I should destroy you?” he asked incredulously.

Aziraphale shrugged nervously, and was slow to meet Crowley’s eyes. “You don’t have to, necessarily. I could…I could do it myself, if you wouldn’t want to be involved. It wouldn’t be on your hands, anyway. I’m offering.” He looked brave, and terrified, and heartbroken, and completely convinced to kill himself for Crowley’s sake, just so he could have a chance.

Crowley could barely breathe without screaming out loud.

“Have you lost your mind?” he hissed desperately. “Is this some sick attempt of torturing me into playing along with your bodyswap plan?”

“I’m not playing any games, Crowley” the angel assured him firmly. “I just want to make sure you’ll be safe, even if I won’t be there to see it through. This is all I can give you, all I can give that you could possibly still want from me.”

Aziraphale knelt down slowly on the hard, unforgiving floor, palms facing up as he placed his hands on his thighs. Head bowed, waiting patiently for whatever fate Crowley had planned for him, he looked like the quintessential sacrificial lamb; it was unbearable.

Crowley’s knees protested as the demon let himself drop in front of the angel and grabbed his face with both hands. Forcing Aziraphale’s chin up, he met damp but determined-looking eyes with his own.

“What are you doing?” he asked hysterically, still hoping in a perverse way that this would just be a trick, that everything might turn out to be a joke like the dinosaurs had been.

Aziraphale smiled regretfully; his eyes were soft and sad. “Trying to do right by you, for once, after I failed you so many times. I do hope the world will be completely back to normal, after…after tomorrow.”

Crowley shook his head firmly as he dropped his hands from the angel’s face; his palms instantly missed its warmth. “Aziraphale, a world without you is not one I am particularly interested in living in” he confessed wrily.

The angel frowned, even as his mouth twisted complicatedly around that speck of hope. “But you’re angry with me.”

“Of course I’m angry with you!” Crowley exclaimed in frustration. “You lied to me, and you hurt me. You hurt me so much, Aziraphale.” His voice got thinner and thinner before it broke on the angel’s name; Aziraphale felt a tear slip down his cheek but didn’t dare move to wipe it off. He needn’t have worried. Crowley reached out with a shaking hand and gently caught the tear with his fingertips, caressing his face almost like an afterthought, even if they both knew it was anything but that.

“You broke my heart, but living without you, knowing the universe was empty of you…I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

“You told me to go away” the angel muttered quietly, painfully, even as his insides yelled at him for reminding the demon of that fact. “That you didn’t want me in your life anymore.”

“Ngk.” Crowley reached out violently and yanked Aziraphale into a hug. He clung tightly to the angel’s broad shoulders even as the more rational part of his brain informed him that they would still need to have a long talk about many things. “Later” he hissed, not realising he had said it out loud until Aziraphale made an inquisitive noise, which he shrugged off with a noncommittal hum against Aziraphale’s shoulder. The angel was slow to wrap his arms around Crowley, it seemed too good to be true; but when the demon didn’t make any move to literally stab him in the back, he buried his face in Crowley’s hair and inhaled deeply. As his arms tightened around the demon’s torso, he felt the shakes that wracked Crowley’s body as he finally let loose. Gently, he rocked Crowley in his arms and soothed him while the demon sobbed, while Aziraphale was hiding more than a few quiet tears in Crowley’s embrace himself.

They could easily have stayed there for weeks, just holding each other, revelling in the other’s presence, the way they felt in their arms – slightly different than they had imagined in some of their wildest dreams that they would have never admitted to having, but even lovelier in reality. However, the dark cloud of their respective head offices still loomed over them, and thus they had to keep a short leash on time.

“I don’t want you to go” Crowley mumbled against Aziraphale’s neck before he drew back to meet the angel’s eyes. “I don’t ever want you to go. I’m sorry I said that.”

Aziraphale nodded in understanding as he stroked Crowley’s back tenderly, soothingly. “I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry for everything I did, for letting you believe I didn’t care for you as much as I do. It was deplorable, and I can’t…” Crowley shushed him gently, with a brittle smile.

“You can keep apologising when we survive…if we survive.” He sounded horribly uncertain, and Aziraphale hated to see even more pain wash onto Crowley’s already exhausted-looking features.

“We will win, of course” the angel quipped in remembrance of a sunny day in St. James’s Park, when life had been much easier; only to make Crowley laugh.

Crowley cracked a smile, at least, and it almost chased away the haunted look in his eyes. “You really believe that?” he shot back, the same mischievous smile playing around his mouth, even if it was painted in a bit of a more sombre colour palette, so to speak.

Aziraphale gently cupped Crowley’s cheek in his hand, wistfully caressing the skin with his thumb and wishing he would have done so ages ago. Still, no time like the present – and ideally, the future.

“I do. I really, really do.”

He wasn’t just talking about winning.

Crowley understood, and kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR THE ANGST BUT THEY'LL BE OKAY

**Author's Note:**

> I'LL MAKE IT RIGHT I PROMISE


End file.
